


Shades

by Raynidreams



Category: Battlestar Galactica (2003)
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-02-10
Updated: 2012-02-10
Packaged: 2017-10-30 21:47:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,071
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/336516
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Raynidreams/pseuds/Raynidreams
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A conversation between Kara and Leoben, set 4.5.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Shades

Darkness interspersed with blinding light. Light wrapped in darkness. She peers at him, just knowing it's him as he stands at the datastream port alone. The flickering fires of coding stroking down the hard planes of his cheeks. His hand reared out to touch.

A small portion of her wonders at what he's doing as he stands there. What events he controls by merely resting his hand in the water? These questions coming to the dying sparks of the old, inquisitive Kara; the one who used to mildly ponder over his actions. But now, the newer scattered Kara who has replaced her doesn't give a crap. She is only interested in regaining a purpose. In finding something to latch on to.

She drops her helmet and it hits the floor loudly. The noise of it roaring and ripping through the tranquil sounds of the waterfalls like an animal in pain.

She waits.

He doesn't twitch, but she senses his regard shift over to her.

Already rolled down to her waist, Kara peels down and then steps out of her flightsuit.

The act is sensory. The hot fabric shedding like a layer of her own skin. It's also predatory. It says that she is here to stay. Staking a claim on him and his time, because she doesn't give a frak for what he's doing or why. She's come here solely for herself. It never would be for him. His life is inconsequential. Forfeit. He'd had four months of her life when she could have been elsewhere, so now he has no right to his own now. Her mind a dark place full of resentment for where they are after all that has come before.

"Talk to me already. You know I'm here. You always know," she says without taking the courtesy to greet him. Courtesy is something else that fails to apply between them.

He doesn't reply but does angle his head so that their eyes can meet. And at the connection, vitriol streams through her, for he appears just the slightest bit unhappy to see her; his unhappiness making her spitefully full of glee.

"So,' she purrs, the word extending out, stalling, while she stifles the urge to march over and hit him or possibly yank him down and force him to make her forget that she's dead.

He continues to watch her with that slightly off expression tugging at the corners of his lips.

For a moment, Kara has the painful recollection of how wonder and calmness always used to craft his expression when he'd looked at her. How his every intent and deed seemed to be fixed upon and around her. At how that she was everything that he'd wanted and desired.

Then the visual memory washes away, to be instantly replaced with how and when they meet now, everything of their past together is wiped from the surface. Of how he tries to avoid her now as much as possible. How he never lets her see what he's truly thinking.

"What do you want, Kara?" he enquires, his voice sounding almost tired.

Her fury spills out. An inferno of rage. How dare he be tired of her? She shifts, gathering in her emotions to fuel the swing that she powers up with each step, and getting close, to find its focus. Her arm triggers back as her fist forms. She draws it around then strikes.

She feels alive.

He catches the blow a foot away from his body. Her knuckles smacking into his palm with enough force to hurt. The sound of the slap and her surprised hiss from the flare echo out, bouncing around the room just as jarringly as the drop of her helmet on the floor did a moment ago. And transforming rapidly, her hiss becomes a curse when she tries to pull away, only to be prevented from doing so by the fierce grip he maintains on her fist.

If the blow had hurt him at all, Leoben shows no sign of it. His grip hard and fast, his face remaining smooth, and pinched only by the weary tolerance that had marked his tone of voice before. That and the rue at having brought her more harm.

Her fury, tempered down from being channelled into the almost blow, spikes again at seeing this. At his concern over causing her hurt in defending himself. She's come here not after pity, particularly not from him, and seeing it in his gaze only stretches her dark mood further.

Again she tries to pull away.

The regret morphs into strain, and faster than she can twist free, he switches so that he's gripping her palm with interlaced fingers, then lifting her arm so that she can't move. Kara almost dangles against him for a breath until he holds her still with the other hand around her waist. It's a pantomime of their first meeting. The speed and strength he shows from them being apart to her being pinned. Only this time he doesn't threaten her life. Can't. Can't threaten her with anything. Only hold her suspended. Keep her still and ground her with touch.

He keeps his tone level and remote when he says, "Talk to me truthfully and without spite, Kara." His features expressionless against the attack and heedless of her struggle to get free.

So instead she stops trying to rip away and rears her face closer to his. Its effect to make him tilt his aside. Apart and yet so near. Leoben aiming to keep her at arm's length while still being contained within his hold. Kara clocks this and grins almost lasciviously, feeling as if she's gotten him to react despite his reserve. Cracked the nut on his self-discipline. And knowingly or not, she breaks him open completely, when for a second she melts and lets him see behind the mask. The misery beyond the façade settling her features into pain.

They battle then, her rootlessness and her uncertainty. The whirlwind of her conflictions against this blank wall of his. At, as she thinks, his inability to find meaning. His onset of blindness. They war inside of her and in the sparks threading between them. Until she sinks and stops fighting. Relying on him to hold her up. She wasn't helpless. Never would be again except in this. And momentarily, she hands something over to him, the weight of it all. Making it  _his_ responsibility to find the answer and not hers. His eyes flare at the submission and at the challenge. He holds her up without changing posture at first, taking the extra weight with just a flex of tendon and a slight locking of muscle. Then with definite slowness, he slides her down his body. Watching as her eyes flicker between anger, want and hopelessness.

"We can dance around why you're here until the end of forever," he continues. "So I'll tell you instead. I see the trouble behind this storm," he provides.

"I can't… my head. All I see…"

"Is your death, because it's all I see." His words sound forced.

Finally he blinks to end the stare that has cemented between them. Clearly ill at ease. And it makes Kara wonders if he sees the blood on her. The blood she cannot wash off. The throat-gripping iron scent of it. The smell of old blood. Dead blood.

"It happened didn't it? You saw it too. Saw me?"

"You want it to be a lie, I know. But it was real and you know this as well as I."

She chews on her lower lip, tearing chunks out of the tender flesh with her teeth. And her obvious pain proves to be the tipping point from him aiming to keep his upper half angled away from her. The pose so similar to how he's been acting ever since they found Earth. Found her... how he's been coating himself in a layer of steel every time he's seen her. Ducked to be one among his many brothers. And before when she's pushed, he's been indifferent to the dispirited shade that she has become. The shade as the result of his love.

It's Kara who breaks the silence and changes the topic. "I used to try and put you out of my head. Telling myself over and over that New Caprica didn't happen. That those weeks locked up were not even a real memory." She feels him shift closer, pulled in by the tarnished hitch to her words. "But it wasn't the weeks with you that I really carried. It was a few days. A few days holding a little girl in my arms. Feeling how life and not only death had been created by me."

"You were chasing the light. It's what I thought I was supposed to teach you."

She tenses then slumps once more. The tidal surges of her emotions spent from finally having him talk to her; for them talking though her fears, and tortuously, about their shared past. Something that she'd never wanted to discuss before.

Sensing the lull he lets go of her and pushes himself away so she stands back on her own two feet. Away but still close. He angles down to look at her.

"I'm wrong. This is wrong," she continues.

"What is?"

"The part of me that wishes I were a machine, because then I'd have an answer," she spits. "Then I'd know. Then I'd… I'd…" Kara feels like the world has shifted on its axis around her, but it's a struggle to set this impression into words.

Leoben looks and sees what it is she wishes.

"You wish you could go back to then."

"Yes. Because then I hated you. Then I was consumed by it. It was perfect because in no way in that dollhouse was I the person in the wrong. Nothing was down to me." She paused. "There was something just so simple about my mind set. I wanted you dead and I wanted to be free."

He doesn't speak and so she shakes her head in exasperation. Then twists aside, flinging out an arm in frustration.

"But now, since finding Earth, my head's all over the place. Everything is muted. Food, drink, flying. The mission. The  _endless_ mission to find somewhere. Anywhere. Gods, the futility of it."

She bends to rest over the datastream, her shoulders twitching faintly, the jolts running in little waves. He shifts carefully and leans onto the counter by her side.

Softly he whispers, "It's not futile."

"Yeah, right. You think I'm false. I saw it in your face. When I told you what the hybrid said."

He didn't deny it.

"Are you afraid of me now? Think that I'm some kind of evil sent to destroy us."

He shook his head quickly. Then looks at her. His eyes serious with intent. "No. How can you be after everything that both of our peoples have done. I wonder perhaps if the hybrid is right. Perhaps you are the end for us all. We've all made grievous errors. So perhaps it is the will of God that none of us will escape…Lethe."

Kara's body tightens in an almost flinch.

"But then in my heart," he goes on, "I want to believe that this can't be. That there is a way." The last few words come out carefully, compassionately. And her body moves towards his a fraction as if seeking the warmth from a fire, only for her to realise what she is doing. To disguise the move, she eases away to rest over the datastream, her fingers not quite touching the liquid. Hunching over the panel and there finding her face reflected in the shimmer below. She knows she looks older these past few weeks. Torn and lined. Lifting two fingers, she touches the deepest frown band at her forehead. Hopelessness shaping her look.

His face joins hers when he too looks down next to her. Through their reflections they both stare at one another.

"I believe that if there is a way, then you will be the one to find it."

"You believe… you believe…" she repeats, then demands, "but you don't  _see_?"

Her harsh breath ripples the water and warps their images.

"Not anymore."

Her laugh comes again.

"That makes two of us then."

She twists to examine him. Studying him hard, though not like she used to, with murderous intent. He lets her look while he remains bowed over the stream. She thinks over all that has gone on between them. From their first meeting. His arrogance. His lack of fear. His justifications. His knowledge and the game that he played. Then to their second meeting. Her returning to find Sam unconscious. Then the sound of a step behind her. The arm around her chest and the scratch of a needle to awakening to the gleam of his smile and the months that followed. The apartment and his controlling care.

His many, many deaths.

To Kasey. The child that had been and that never was, hers.

The loss of time during those four months was forever a loop of indistinguishable time in her head. And the past never far away for the two of them, because the future had always been an ever present third party to their time together.

There had been meetings past then of course. The Demetrius and since. But those circular months and especially the last few precious days of fantasy, of almost normality, had always stayed with her so vividly, despite what she'd said earlier and how much she liked to pretend otherwise.

Not wanting to ask, but unable to help herself, "Do you think about back then very often? I mean, in your head, are you here with me now? On Earth? On some mystical mountain landscape with your obsessive rivers… or back on New Caprica?"

She sounded too fragile with the question, she realised too late and could have kicked herself, despising the small, old part of herself which intruded once more.

"I've walked in between the trees and granite. I've ran in sand. I've drunk rain water and tasted the dew of grass. These things are a part of my memory – both collective and in person. But in answer to your question, above these things, I used to project more about our home…"

"It was never that!"

"It was for me. Before the war, I was planet-bound for only a few short months. Days in which I ate and drank my mission. And when I found myself part of the fleet, I continued to follow orders." He breathed in. "New Caprica became the first time that I ever had anything that was mine."

"It was a lie."

"Yes… perhaps. But one I willingly accepted in the hope of it becoming something else."

"You're so screwed up." And she expects his wry smile at that. The one which usually deflates her barbs. Inexplicably, he looks pained instead.

"I would like to project back to then. The smell of the paint instead of the scentless air in here. The warmth of the sun and the ochre light in the evenings over the mean temperature and fixed spots of light. The sound of you in the shower. Your feather-soft breath as you slept. Your boot-falls brushing against …"

"Stop it," she grinds out, pushing away from the counter.

"No. You came to me. You brought this up and now I want to say it."

Kara turns to leave. She had wanted to talk. She had wanted answers. But this is all too familiar and it feels like although she has asked, she doesn't really want to know. She recognises that deep down, she'd only asked to hurt him. The result was that she's only ended up hurting herself.

"Stop running." He seizes her forearm, refusing to let go when she tries to shake him off. "Kara, I recall how my senses became attuned to the very sound your body made as it was ready to attack. Hearing it over the sounds of plates clinking and the music I played you. I became aware of that space and your place within it as if it were an extension of my own mind. Everything. The feel of the cushions as I sat after you'd vacated a seat and left your warmth; the tawny colour that surrounded us." He paused, frowning. "The milky smell of Kasey and how perfect she looked in your arms."

Kara spins back, her eyes glittering. This is not what she wanted when she came here, but she knows it's all he's got.

"What do you project now? Still that happy little room? Well enjoy your frakked up visions of the past. For it's all you're frakking good for!"

His hand pinches her harder then bangs her closer to him. This time using his other to cup her cheek. "You asked me what I think of? What I project? And I'm telling you that I have these memories Kara, but I do not use them anymore."

She snorts. Then sees that he has no intention of letting go.

"Go on then. Amuse me?"

"This is not a game Kara. All of our aftermaths and preludes are done and the time for pretence is long over."

Dumbfounded at him she asks, "How do you do it? Still manage to come out with this shit?"

Leoben shifts the hand from holding her face and wets a finger in the stream. He releases her and with his dry hand, he taps his head. "There are no answers in here." Then raises his damp finger. A single drop of water sparkling on the end. He brings it close to her forehead and presses it there. "Only questions."

The anger comes back to her twice-fold, staining her cheeks like a fever. She wipes the droplet from her forehead with the back of her wrist in one jerky movement.

"You keep your frakking questions then," she spat. "And anything else you have to offer." The words nasty. She stares him out a moment more, prolonging this (perhaps their final meeting), then turns to storm out.

Leoben watches the emptiness left by her passing shadow, before bending to pick up her helmet. Running his fingers along the brow, too many pictures pass through his mind to understand. And which ones are the truth and which ones are false, he no longer knows.


End file.
